When it comes to creating content for a web or traditional marketing campaign, there are inevitable questions that arise. When it comes to content, among the most important, most talked about, and most often debated — is the ‘quality versus quantity?’. This debate raises the question of whether or not more words matter, or what it is that those words say really matters.
Different people have different opinions, but for my part, quality always comes up trumps. The number of words should it takes to convey a message is the right number of words. Filling a blog post or article with padding to make it appear more authoritative is a waste of time, and will often have the opposite result to what you intended. Rather than engaging your reader, you will bore them, and they will simply leave.
Quality Always Matters
If you are writing for your own business blog for instance, don’t simply throw words out onto a blog page or into a marketing schematic to simply say you did it – to tick it off your ‘to do’ list. You should have a clear and defined goal, as well as investing the time to research what it is that you want the readers to gather from reading, listening, or watching (your written content, audio or video).
A blog post, for example, that is thrown out with spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, or rushed content with no direction, or that is repetitive, will quickly catch your readers’ attentions for all the wrong reasons. Be sure that each post is well written and relevant to your audience. If your website and business is focused on cosmetic dentistry, don’t be tempted to promote your partner’s unrelated business.
Some feel that the more that they write, the better the response. On the contrary, these posts will fail if they do not have a clear and coherent message. Again, quality matters in what you post, no matter its length.
Quantity Always Matters
On the other hand, simply saying quality is all that matters is not 100% correct either. You need to ensure that you are posting regularly enough for your readers/clients/prospects to begin to develop a relationship with you. That means that you need to schedule regular postings and boosting these through social media, with the aim of building a loyal following over time. From a search engine perspective, your website pages and blog posts should be a minimum of 350 words to be considered worthwhile.
One mistake that many marketers make however, is publishing posts too often – clogging their reader’s Inboxes with alerts, or not giving the reader time to absorb what they are trying to tell them. From a management perspective, developing a publishing schedule is ideal – planned and considered strategically – including focusing on holidays and events in which your readers may be interested or to which they will relate.
What Wins Then?
It would be too easy to find arguments that demonstrate how quantity or quality is best. However, in reality, they will always tie. Both are important and need to be considered before you publish online or in your marketing schematic.
I recommend that within a successful content marketing plan, my clients plan for quality and plan for consistency. I encourage them to have ‘light and shade’ in their blog posts by committing to a combination of shorter evergreen posts and longer news-focused and authority posts. Keeps things interesting.
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